winter sports

Winterdance is a book about a crazed fool who tries to run the Iditarod without any real knowledge of the race and very little experience with running dog sled teams. This makes Gary Paulsen's trip across Alaska hilarious and entertaining. One example of this is toward the beginning of the book when he falls off his sled during training. His snow hook catches in his boot and the dogs drag him around. During the turns the dogs crack the whip, and he "established intimate relations with trees". Paulsen talks you through his entire trip across Alaska in this same funny way.

Winterdance is told through Gary Paulsen's eyes but is not limited to him as the main character. Some of the other main characters include but are not limited to Cookie, his female lead dog, Devil, his crazy mean male dog that eats anything that moves or at least takes a bite out of it, and Max, male his weakest link.

Normally I only read fantasy books, but I found that Gary Paulsen's Winterdance both funny and entertaining enough to please me.

This book packs quite a punch. Each chapter ended with this reader wincing for the author, who had just spent the night stumbling through a Minnesota swamp, his eyes almost swollen shut from mosquito bites, searching for his runaway dog team, or had been blown down an Alaskan mountainside with his team, in the midst of a blinding snowstorm.

Not to mention the five-skunk night.

It takes a great deal of physical as well as mental toughness to train for the Iditarod, much less run a team of half-wild dogs in the actual race.

"Winterdance" reminds me of Algernon Blackwood's "Wendigo:" in both stories men are caught by the spirit of the Great Northern Wilderness, and perish or almost perish. I think the most telling moment in Paulsen's book comes when he runs his team to the end of his trapline---and then keeps on going in the dead of a Minnesota winter, just to see what lies beyond the next hill. His wife's intuition to call out a search team was correct, even though Paulsen eventually did turn back. The 'Wendigo' or wanderlust had almost captured his soul.

It also reminds me of "Call of the Wild." Like Jack London, Paulsen has a laconic, fluid writing style, and both authors include the Wilderness itself as one of their major characters. I won't say that either man subscribed to Blackwood's weird brand of pantheistic mysticism, but read how Paulsen slowly bonds with his dogs--and other wild animals.

This book is also a grand dog story with more pratfalls than a "Three Stooges" movie. The author spent many a night on his backside, being dragged down a dirt road (or worse, through a second-growth forest) by his lusty team. Running the Iditarod takes a very special madness, and Paulsen endured moose attacks, blizzards, dog bites, and too many helpings of moose chili to draw us into his very beautiful and brutal world.

the skunks... the skunks... the skunks!!!!
What a riot!